When manufacturing composite aircraft fuselages, multiple primary and secondary structural parts are typically molded, cured and trimmed separately, and then assembled together, using numerous tools for each of these operations. Each tool and operation usually increases the costs and time of the manufacturing process.
Some large composite airframe sections are manufactured using collapsible mandrels or collapsible tooling in order to be able to extract the mandrel or tooling from within the completed structure after curing. However, collapsible tooling can be relatively complex and/or more prone to failure or damage than solid tooling.